If you're of the mind-set that your personal and business
lives should remain separate, here are a number of strategies to
help you make the transition from one life to another as clean as
possible.

Dress up your office for business. For one
freelance public relations writer and president of a PR firm, this
means putting the name of her business on the door to her home
office, so that as soon as she opens her office door in the
morning, she knows she's at work. Conversely, when she shuts it
at night, she's in a different mode entirely.

When an owner of a marketing consulting firm walks into his
office, the pictures on the wall project an overriding message-that
he'd better get down to business. Work-related photos and
mementos are everywhere, and a huge calendar that tracks business
appointments eclipses one wall. People seeking clean transitions
and boundaries make every effort to keep children's toys out of
their offices and work papers out of the dining room.

Dress yourself for your role. Few who work at home
don a suit when they move from the kitchen to their home office.
But many people feel they need to be dressed in something other
than a robe to get into the mental state of work. One entrepreneur,
for instance, relies on shoes to symbolize the transition. Right
inside her office door is a pair of comfortable dress shoes, which
she slips on when she enters her office for the day. Right outside
the door are sneakers; she changes into these when she takes a
lunch break or leaves the office for the day. For her, the change
of shoes signals the transition from home to work and back
again.

Organize your life so you're not jumping back and
forth between home and work. One way to handle thoughts
about what has to be done in one part of the house while you're
in another is to keep two separate "to do" lists. The
"work to do" is kept in the living part of your home,
while the "home to do" is in the office. If you suddenly
remember something you have to do at work while you're watering
the lawn in the evening, for example, don't rush into your
office to do it. Write it down on your "work to do" list,
and bring the list with you when you enter the office the next
morning. Somehow, writing down a worry removes it as a distraction.
It gives you license to say to yourself, "That's enough of
that right now. I'll take care of it later."